The healthcare industry keeps growing every day, and while it’s happening, the need for better inventory management rises. Tracking your inventory and maintaining accurate data isn’t easy. It involves the procurement, inventory control, drug storage, distribution systems, repacking and label considerations, and recapture and disposal of both used and unused pharmaceutical products. Because of this, you need an effective inventory system for your pharmacy.
A pharmacy inventory system is a software that stores data and systemizes and controls the use of the medication process with the pharmacies. Since the healthcare industry continues to grow every day, this software will help pharmacists control their stock and choosing the right medicines. This saves them a lot of time and effort while helping more people.
How does an inventory system work in pharmacies?
Using the inventory management system, pharmacists can control the pharmacy reliably. Usually, patients prefer to visit the pharmacy instead of the doctor whenever they experience minor illnesses. The software will enable pharmacists to prescribe over-the-counter drugs that are available for these ailments.
Below are the different functions of an inventory management system, which you and your pharmacists can benefit from in assisting patients:
- It provides an adequate stock of supplies and pharmaceuticals.
- It reduces unexpected stock-outs and temporary shortages, which can affect patient care.
- It reduces financial investment (the carrying cost) in drug products.
- It minimizes the amount of time you spend on purchasing functions.
- It minimizes the amount of money you spend when you place orders to the wholesaler.
- It minimizes the capital charge on average inventory.
- It minimizes breakage, shrinkage, and obsolescence of your inventory.
- It reduces the amount of money you spend by allowing you to select products based on organizational formulary requirements, cost, and bioequivalence.
What are the features of the best inventory system for pharmacies?
If you’re still tracking your pharmacy inventory manually, then you should start switching to an automated inventory system. Using this system will help you maintain accuracy in your inventory. Not only that, but you will also be able to save time and effort as you track your pharmacy inventory. You can now focus on other important tasks and patient care as you use the inventory management system.
The only challenge here is how to find the best system for your pharmacy. Not all inventory systems have the same features. To help you, we’ve come up with 7 must-have features that you need to look for when choosing an inventory system:
- Easy-to-use and user-friendly
- HIPAA-compliant
- Immense data loading capabilities
- Complete prescription management
- Data loading
- Advanced inventory management features
Easy-to-use and user-friendly
inputs An inventory management software should be able to keep your patients’ records secured for the users. So, when choosing one, you need to consider the usability of the system. Can you understand how the system works by yourself? Is it easy to navigate? Or do you need to undergo training just to use the software? Choose the software that will not confuse you and your pharmacists in any way.
It’s already 2020, so you shouldn’t need lengthy sales visits to figure out how the system works. It should be intuitive so you can have everything up and running in just a few minutes, all by yourself. And you shouldn’t have to call tech support every time you need to do something.
HIPAA-compliant
The system you choose for your pharmacy should have all the necessary legal documents and must meet the legal requirements. For this same reason, it should be in compliance with HIPAA and other regulatory bodies. These regulatory bodies create rules and plan for organizations related to pharmaceuticals. Your company must follow these important rules to continue operating in this business.
Immense data loading capabilities
Pharmacy inventory systems need to manage huge amounts of data. Because of this, your software should meet the required capabilities. It’s not possible to feed all this data manually, as there’s a risk of entering inaccurate information. Irrespective of the resources you put into the working, there will always be a concern regarding the errors. But with an automated inventory system in place, this shouldn’t be the case.
Complete prescription management
When choosing an inventory management software, make sure it has the ability to manage your patient’s information completely, and adjust some additional information. Software related to pharmaceutical companies are popular for keeping their patients’ health information secured, and therefore, it must have exceptional features to keep all this information intact for future use.
Data loading
As mentioned earlier, the software will need to deal with a huge amount of data to keep information about inventory-related items safe enough over the software. This can be a challenging task that will require automated assistance instead of going for human assistance. Because of this, you need to choose a pharmacy inventory system that can help you address this and overcome this challenge.
Use a software that will let you scan items using a mobile app, so you can easily update your inventory any time. All you need to do is to connect QR labels and barcodes, check-in and check-out items using a built-in scanner, and give your staff instant access!
Advanced inventory management features
And since you’re dealing with inventory, one of the features that you need to focus on is how the system deals with the inventory. Inventory management helps reduce issues such as ineffective management and other inventory-related issues. And since you’re automatically tracking your inventory, you wouldn’t need to hire someone to do the same thing anymore. It would save you additional expenses.
Conclusion
An inventory system can make a difference when it comes to tracking your inventory and managing your pharmacy. It’s perfect even for small businesses. Using this system, you will be able to capture all your assets and other important details for a more effective way to stay on top of your inventory whenever, wherever. Dealing with inventory can be one of the least fun activities, so choose the inventory management software for your pharmacy that can you’ll enjoy using. It’s not because it’s entertaining, but because it can help you accomplish your tasks easier so you can get on with your day.